Thursday 14 January 2010 19.10 EST
First published on Thursday 14 January 2010 19.10 EST

Stoke City hope to be in a position to announce that David James has signed on loan for the remainder of the season but senior officials at the Britannia Stadium remained cautious after negotiations with Portsmouth reached an impasse.

James is keen to move to Stoke to improve his chances of being in the England squad for the World Cup and Portsmouth would welcome the opportunity to offload one of their biggest earners, but the two clubs spent most of yesterday ­haggling over just how much each should contribute towards the 39-year-old's wages before a loan deal can be agreed.

Stoke have a wage structure and are not willing to break that to sign James, especially as the goalkeeper has been suffering with injuries this season. The Midlands club are also concerned that James's contract with Portsmouth runs until the end of June which, with the Premier League season ending on 9 May, raises questions about who should pick up the goalkeeper's salary when he has finished playing club football.

It is possible that Portsmouth will have to not only cover that period but also pay half of James's wages during his time at Stoke. "If this does go through, I tell you now it'll be a cracking deal for us," said Tony Pulis, the Stoke manager. "If he comes to Stoke he's got good competition with Thomas Sorensen and Steve Simonsen. But he's got the opportunity, if he gets in our team, to prove that he's good enough to be on the plane going to South Africa."

Portsmouth's squad appears ripe for the plunder by rival clubs and one of their most saleable assets, the defender Younes Kaboul, is the subject of interest from ­Tottenham Hotspur, his former club.

It is known that Portsmouth owe ­Tottenham an instalment on Kaboul's £6m switch from White Hart Lane to ­Fratton Park in August 2008 and their failure to pay has been a contributing factor in the Premier League's placing of a transfer embargo on them.

Portsmouth, who will appear at the High Court today to contest their tax bill, owe a total of £10m in unpaid instalments on transfer fees to clubs which include Chelsea, Lens, Rennes and Udinese.

Tottenham's move for Kaboul has been driven by the injury concern over Jonathan Woodgate, who has a groin complaint, although the money that Portsmouth owe to them over Kaboul might also have been a factor. Tottenham's thinking was that they could use the debt to drive a bargain. Yet the Premier League has now intervened to complicate the situation further.

It intends to divert Portsmouth's next tranche of television money, a sum of £7m, directly to the club's creditors, because it has not been appeased by their explanations over how they plan to repay such debts. The League said, in a statement, that "this includes both domestic and overseas clubs".

So Tottenham stand to get most of their money back, with the promise of the rest to follow. Redknapp, though, who has already taken Jermain Defoe, Peter Crouch and Niko Kranjcar from Portsmouth, his former club, could press ahead for Kaboul regardless. Meanwhile, to Portsmouth's frustration, the embargo remains in place. Avram Grant, the Portsmouth manager, who is working with threadbare resources, believes that he needs reinforcement during the transfer window to stand a fighting chance of avoiding relegation.